The day the “dignified” and “courteous” coach was given the top football job in the country we wrote: “Football fans and football analysts from around the country who say the former Reds boss was never given a chance at Liverpool FC, didn’t have to live through it.”

But here on Merseyside we were preaching to the already converted.

Hodgson lasted 191 days as Liverpool manager, from July 1 2010 to January 8, 2011.

There was the shocking home defeat by Wolves – and the miserable reverse at Ewood Park that ultimately signalled his departure.

But perhaps most worrying was the ability to describe a completely different scenario to the one we'd just witnessed.

Remember the Goodison derby in 2010, when Everton strolled into a decisive 2-0 lead before declaring?

Traumatised Reds fans have tried to forget it, but Roy said: “That was as good as we have played all season, and I have no qualms with the performance whatsoever. I only hope fair-minded people will see it the same way.”

Or how about: “There aren’t many quality left-backs around in the world, never mind in England – so to find an English one who can go straight into the team without any adjustment problems is a big advantage.”

Paul Konchesky was the ‘quality’ left-back who singularly failed to adjust to life at Anfield.

Or “They’ll be a formidable challenge – there’s no question about that.”

Fourth Division Northampton certainly were. They knocked Liverpool out of the League Cup at Anfield.

Then there was the spectacularly casual reference to one of the most celebrated figures in Liverpool Football Club’s history.

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“We involve him in our scouting while he still works at The Academy and plays an ambassadorial role. That's what he’s good at.”

Kenny Dalglish probably was good at scouting and promoting the club, but he was even better at managing, as he proved when he took over the mess he inherited at Anfield and guided Liverpool to their last piece of silverware.

But there was much, much more.

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish and West Brom manager Roy Hodgson shake hands before the Premier League match at The Hawthorns on April 2, 2011(Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

“Everyone I know in football respects the job I’m doing here and aren’t too surprised it hasn’t been an easy start, in fact 95 per cent would have predicted it, as Mourinho did. ‘Liverpool will get worse and worse’ is what he said.”

That was a curiously self critical, self-fulfilling prophesy.

Then “We are right up there in terms of results” – at a time when the Reds had taken seven points from 18 and lay 11th in the Premier League’s form table.

Or “0-0 would have been a reasonable result for us” after Liverpool had lost at home to Wolves in one of the most characterless, passionless displays ever served up at Anfield.

Perhaps my personal favourite, though, was: “I suppose you might say it’s been topsy-turvy in the sense that having been deified, people have then started to crucify me but that’s part of the business.”